The Many Crimes and Misdemeanors of Yasiel Puig

Tim Brown, of Yahoo! Sports, tries ably to defend young punk Yasiel Puig today. But, as Pedro Gomez laid out yesterday, Puig’s a young man going down a dark road, full of not respecting his elders and trying to get women to pay attention to him. It’s that very same path that led a young Dorian Gray to a lifetime of debauchery, disgrace, and murder most foul.

But Gomez doesn’t even report the half of what Puig has done since debuting on June 3. Indeed, his list of crimes against human decency are myriad and shocking. They include, but are not limited to:

Devastating the confidence of pitchers – Pitchers are fragile creatures, and any time they are being abused as Puig has been abusing them (.397/.429/.630) they are prone to suffer greatly from a crisis of confidence. Who knows on what deep spirals of shame they might descend, or what may become of them? Clayton Richard is hiding on the DL right now, afraid to come out of his room and talking about shaving down his shoulder, all to avoid facing Puig again. Adam Ottavino won’t stop crying.  Remember poor Sybil Vane, who swallowed prussic acid after disappointing her Dorian, and fear for what might be.

Still doesn’t speak English – Puig has been in the United States for a full year now, and still needs an interpreter because he’s not fluent in the language he had no cause to learn or speak until one year earlier. If I can still remember how to ask where the bathroom is in Spanish (Donde aste la biblioteca?) surely he can learn enough English to speak to reporters who are desperate for him to say something wrong.

Contributed to the generation of fisticuffsmanship with his face – If Puig had been a better ducker, maybe the Diamondbacks and Dodgers wouldn’t have brawled, and there wouldn’t be so much bad blood between them today.

Bat flippery –

Spells name wrong – I don’t have time to learn to spell his name the way he wants it spelled, and frankly, I shouldn’t have to. He’s no better than me, and I think it should be Yasail. I tried to make that point in my first Puig-related column for NotGraphs, but those pesky kids Carson Cistulli and Dave Cameron, and their stupid dog, sabotaged my efforts.

Refuses to hang out with me, despite numerous invitations – I’m a fun guy. I like baseball. I figure “Yasiel” and I would have a lot in common, except for the fact that we’d need his interpreter to come along so that we could communicate.

Prejudice – From what Brown reports, Puig is super friendly to kids and fans and team employees. But he’s racist against journalists or something.

And finally, in addition to stiffing Luis Gonzalez, Puig has shoulder checked Mike Schmidt into a locker, chased Henry Aaron with a bat, mocked Edgar Martinez for not having a position, and urinated on the grave of Harmon Killebrew. Beware, the legend Puig mocks next could be your own.

Obviously, each of these sins weighs ever more heavily on Yasiel Puig’s soul, and his churning insides would be showing outwardly, had he not had a special baseball card created that would reflect the corruption of his own soul and allow him to remain unscathed by time and temptation. Here now, is that baseball card:

Oh. Oh no. It’s worse than we thought.